Designer Spotlight:

I want to introduce you to an amazing interior designer and someone that

I’m proud to call a friend, Erin Zacharda.

It’s a story I think will inspire you to listen to your heart and go after your dreams.

Erin called me a little over a year ago and shared with me her dreams of starting her own design business. She joined my very first Bootcamp, and before she was even finished she landed her fist big job (a 10 room project), and decided to work with me one on one as part of my Cashmere Coaching Program before she got in over her head.

Coincidentally, Erin happens to live in my little country town, and we have built not only a fantastic friendship, but a wonderful working partnership as well.

Let me back up a bit. Erin had taken a year of design in college but switched her focus to teaching and received her bachelor’s degree in elementary education. When her triplets were born (yes, she has 5 year old triplets!) she stopped teaching to raise her kids.

As many of you know, having kids can make you appreciate what’s important in life, even cause you to reevaluate your life choices. She had a degree that guaranteed her a secure job with benefits and a pension, but she never lost the passion for interior design and always wondered “what if?”

That’s when she found me. I know she was worried whether it was too late to change careers, or even if she had enough talent to turn her passionate hobby into a money making business (let’s face it, raising triplets can’t be cheap!). She decided that now was the time to find out, so she called. I’m so glad that she did.

Since my business focus changed over the last few years to helping and coaching designers build their own successful design business, I had stopped working on growing my own. It wasn’t until I met Erin at my Live Workshop (the final step of the Virtual Bootcamp, which I’m about to host on a Cruise Ship in February), that I realized how much I missed working with design clients directly.

It also helps that Erin is an awesome designer, incredibly organized in the areas that I’m not, and an overall wonderful person. Win-win! So far we’ve designed three homes together, and the experience has been great. Each project was a referral from the previous one. They’re all different in style,0 and have posed separate challenges and rewards.

Working together with a new designer has also helped me improve my coaching business. I’m staying up to date with current technology that we can all use to boost our design businesses, and at the same time being reminded that the lessons I teach are still as relevant today as they were two years ago. Erin’s told me that she needed to go back and listen to the Design for a Living Bootcamp replays again, because every lesson that I taught, and all of the “make sure you don’t do this” advice, was happening to her in real life. She wanted to make sure that she didn’t miss anything. I Love it!

Next week I’m going to post a walkthrough video of our most recent remodeling project together. It was a gorgeous water view house in an older part of Seattle that was in desperate need of an overhaul, and we were excited to help. The final result was amazing, if I do say so myself, and I can’t wait to show it to you! We’re going to give you a sneak peek behind our process and share all of our before, during and after pictures. Keep an eye out, you’re going to LOVE it!